The Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy

Edited by Martin Peitz and Joel Waldfogel

Description

The economic analysis of the digital economy has been a rapidly developing research area for more than a decade. Through authoritative examination by leading scholars, this handbook takes a closer look at particular industries, business practices, and policy issues associated with the digital industry. The volume offers an up-to-date account of key topics, discusses open questions, and provides guidance for future research. It offers a blend of theoretical and empirical works that are central to understanding the digital economy. The chapters are presented in four sections, corresponding with four broad themes: 1) infrastructure, standards, and platforms; 2) the transformation of selling, encompassing both the transformation of traditional selling and new, widespread
application of tools such as auctions; 3) user-generated content; and 4) threats in the new digital environment.

The first section covers infrastructure, standards, and various platform industries that rely heavily on recent developments in electronic data storage and transmission, including software, video games, payment systems, mobile telecommunications, and B2B commerce. The second section takes account of the reduced costs of online retailing that threatens offline retailers, widespread availability of information as it affects pricing and advertising, digital technology as it allows the widespread employment of novel price and non-price strategies (bundling, price discrimination), and auctions. The third section addresses the emergent phenomenon of user-generated content
on the Internet, including the functioning of social networks and open source. The fourth section discusses threats arising from digitization and the Internet, namely digital piracy, privacy, and security concerns.

The Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy

Edited by Martin Peitz and Joel Waldfogel

Author Information

Martin Peitz is Professor of Economics at the University of Mannheim. His research focuses on industrial organization, regulation, and microeconomics. He has been widely published in leading economics journals and is author of the books Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies and Regulation and Entry into Telecommunications Markets.

Joel Waldfogel is Professor and Frederick R. Kappel Chair in Applied Economics at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His main research interests are industrial organization and law and economics. He has published over 50 articles in scholarly outlets and authored two books, The Tyranny of the Market: Why You Can't Always Get What You Want and Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for theHolidays.

Contributors:

Shane Greenstein is the Elinor and H. Wendell Hobbs Professor of Management and Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Joseph Farrell is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Tim Simcoe is

Andrei Hagiu is Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Harvard Business School.

Robin Lee is Assistant Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

Wilko Bolt is an economist at the Economics and Research Division of De Nederlandsche Bank. Sujit "Bob" Chakravorti is the Chief Economist and Director of Quantitative Analysis at The Clearing House.

Steffen Hoernig is Associate Professor at the Faculdade de Economiaof the
Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Tommaso Valletti is Professor of Economics at the Business School at Imperial College, London.

Bruno Jullien is a Member of the Toulouse School of Economics at Research Director at CNRS

Ethan Lieber is a PhD student in the Economics Department at the University of Chicago.

Chad Syverson is Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Jose-Luis Moraga is Professor of Economics at the University of Groningen.

Matthijs R. Wildenbeest is Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy · Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.

Drew Fudenberg is the Frederick E. Abbe Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

J.
Miguel Villas-Boas is Professor of Marketing at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jay Pil Choi is Scientia Professor in the School of Economics within the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales.

Ben Greiner is Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, School of Economics.

Axel Ockenfels is Professor of political economics at the University of Cologne.

Abdolkarim Sadrieh is Professor of Economics and Management at the University of Magdeburg.

Luis Cabral is Professor of Economics and Academic Director (New York Center), IESE Business School, University of Navarra and W.R. Berkley Term Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University.

Simon Anderson is
Commonwealth Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia.

Lian Jian is Assistant Professor of Communication and Journalism at the USC Annenberg School.

Jeff MacKie Mason is the Dean of the School of Information at the University of Michigan.

Sanjeev Goyal is Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge.

Justin Johnson is Associate Professor of Economics at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.

Paul Belleflamme is Professor of Economics at Université catholique de Louvain.

Martin Peitz is Professor of Economics at the University of Mannheim.

Joel Waldfogel is the Frederick R. Kappel Chair in Applied Economics at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Alessandro Acquisti is Associate Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University.

Ross Anderson is Professor in Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

Tyler Moore is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS) at Harvard University.

The Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy

Edited by Martin Peitz and Joel Waldfogel

Reviews and Awards

"Analysis of the Internet and related technologies is in its infancy--not surprising, given the newness of these technologies. It is therefore a bit of a daunting task to produce a 'handbook' on the digital economy. This volume, edited by two academic economists, does a reasonable job of covering this wide terrain. . .is a an excellent snapshot of the existing state of the art in social scientific analysis of the digital economy. Recommended."--CHOICE

"Martin Peitz and Joel Waldfogel's handbook offers readers a broad overview of many of the key elements that undergird the digital economy. It is compiled in a manner that does not require a start-to-finish read; each chapter is approachable by itself, so the reader can skip around and still gain many of the insights the handbook has to offer."--
ournal of Regional Science